Page 121 - middlemarch

theory which could bring her own life and doctrine into
strict connection with that amazing past, and give the re-
motest sources of knowledge some bearing on her actions.
That more complete teaching would come—Mr. Casaubon
would tell her all that: she was looking forward to higher
initiation in ideas, as she was looking forward to marriage,
and blending her dim conceptions of both. It would be a
great mistake to suppose that Dorothea would have cared
about any share in Mr. Casaubon’s learning as mere ac-
complishment; for though opinion in the neighborhood of
Freshitt and Tipton had pronounced her clever, that epi-
thet would not have described her to circles in whose more
precise vocabulary cleverness implies mere aptitude for
knowing and doing, apart from character. All her eagerness
for acquirement lay within that full current of sympathet-
ic motive in which her ideas and impulses were habitually
swept along. She did not want to deck herself with knowl-
edge—to wear it loose from the nerves and blood that fed
her action; and if she had written a book she must have
done it as Saint Theresa did, under the command of an au-
thority that constrained her conscience. But something she
yearned for by which her life might be filled with action at
once rational and ardent; and since the time was gone by for
guiding visions and spiritual directors, since prayer height-
ened yearning but not instruction, what lamp was there but
knowledge? Surely learned men kept-the only oil; and who
more learned than Mr. Casaubon?
Thus in these brief weeks Dorothea’s joyous grateful
expectation was unbroken, and however her lover might

1 0 Middlemarch